Re-founding organizational ontology for sustainability: the role of ecological accounting as a bridge between scientific and practical knowledge

Victor Counillon () and Eléonore Disse ()
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Victor Counillon: CERAG - Centre d'études et de recherches appliquées à la gestion - UGA - Université Grenoble Alpes
Eléonore Disse: CGS i3 - Centre de Gestion Scientifique i3 - Mines Paris - PSL (École nationale supérieure des mines de Paris) - PSL - Université Paris Sciences et Lettres - I3 - Institut interdisciplinaire de l’innovation - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique

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Abstract: We are looking to identify what organizational ontology is adapted to integrate ecological issues into accounting and explore how this ontological focus can help building a shared understanding of organizations in the context of ecological crises, by bridging sciences. We adopt a conceptual approach by unveiling the ontological presuppositions underlying some financial and socio-environmental accounting. A hypothetical case study is mobilized to illustrate how C.A.R.E ecological accounting relies on alternative assumptions about the organizational ontology. Ontological presuppositions on organizations are related to the purpose of each accounting framework. Integrating the ecological responsibility of human activities into accounting demands to better consider the impacts organizations have on natural and social entities. "Relational ontologies" seem best adapted to such an understanding. Coupled with a process-based ontology from an extension of traditional accounting, natural and human capitals' uses can be followed and managed. Taking this ontological prism renews the role of accounting: ecological accounting structures and makes sense of information, is fed by and feeds other domain-specific ontologies (e.g. hydrology, climatology, pedology, law, economics). This enables conceptualization of organizational ontology as intrinsically related to these same ontologies. Only then can knowledge generated about organizational processes be rendered relevant in these domains.

Keywords: organization ontology; accounting ontology; ecological accounting; interdisciplinarity; relational ontology; Basic Formal Ontology; natural capital (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024-07-04
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-env, nep-hme and nep-inv
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Published in 40th EGOS Colloquium : Crossroads for Organizations: Time, Space, and People, University of Milano-Bicocca, Jul 2024, Milan, Italy

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